This Guy Just Sold $600,000 Worth Of Board Games

Nick O'Neill • Oct 2, 2013

When Dan Shapiro sat down with his kids to create a board game, he didn’t expect the project to balloon into a $600,000 business. Instead he was just having fun with his family and thought it would be cool to go through the process of creating a physical product.

Dan even intended to lose a little bit of money in the hopes of teaching his children something about the process of building a product. To be honest, when I first heard that Dan Shapiro was on leave from Google and was actively writing a book for O’Reilly about being a startup CEO, I lost some interest. How would the average person be inspired by this story?

However there’s a lot to be learned from Dan’s experience. In the interview above, I chat with Dan about everything from the process of setting up a successful Kickstarter project to the supply chain management process for his board game. Just like with traditional startup financing, it sounds as though raising funding on Kickstarter should be viewed as a full-time job.

Having to do public relations, hiring someone to make a great video, building relations with manufacturers, running a successful Kickstarter campaign requires preparation and ongoing oversight. Listen to Dan’s story and feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments!